September goose season is upon us and hopefully all you goose hunters will have a successful season. Kayla, Ricky and I helped band a bunch of geese at the beginning of the summer, so hopefully you will get some of these banded birds too.

We are now upon the fall banquet season. I would like to encourage each of you to attend a dinner near you or try a mini vacation and attend one in another part of the state. You can find a listing on the Vermont Ducks Unlimited website (www.ducks.org). Please remember to bring a friend or a new member to join in our great cause of preserving wetlands. Remember each new member who stays active in Ducks Unlimited impacts 10 other members. Our committees need new members to help with raising money for the wetlands and of course the ducks. If anyone would like to help call me at 802-878-3581 or email me at VTNDT@surfglobal.net. You can also find phone numbers on the website of the contact person for each dinner.

We have just joined in to keep the Lake Champlain Islands Waterfowl/Hunters Festival alive. We plan to make this festival a first class experience for anyone who enjoys the outdoors. This year we plan on a display of duck boats and decoys. We are also inviting any outdoor organization that would like to set up a booth/display to give us a call. So if you are a member of Wild Turkey Federation, Walleye Assoc., LCI, VT Coalition, Ruffed Grouse Society, VT Federation of Bass Fisherman, VT Retrievers Club and Bear Houndsmen Assoc. come and join us for a great day and help support these wonderful organizations. We would like to invite all carvers to come and show their decoys. We will have a retriever demo, duck calling demo also We are asking that if you have a favorite wild game dish that you bring it to share. If you bring a wild game dish you will receive a free card of 5 raffle tickets. We hope this will be a great beginning of a wild game dinner. Also if you wear any camo item you will receive a ticket for a gun raffle. The waterfowl/hunters party has dozens of decoys, layout blinds and guns for the cost of raffle tickets. We will also have a raffle for kids. The fee for the kids raffle is $10. To make this work we will need to sell at least 100 tickets to our waterfowl/hunters party. Adult tickets will be $25 per person and kids are free(unless they want to be in kids raffle). This will include lunch and a Ducks Unlimited membership. The date and time is set for October 5 from 11am to 5pm at Sand Bar State Park.

Hope to see you there and I will update next week.

Richard Irick

VT State Ducks Unlimited Chairman